Change your links!

Blogging operations (if you can call them that) have moved to http://andrew.parlette.net.

Fort Chode Open VII

BALTIMORE, MD - For the second time in the month of January, the Fort Chode Open gathered to determine who would wear The Brown Jacket. The venue chosen was a new one for the three competitors - Clifton Park in Baltimore City.

After nine holes, the competition was the closest it's been in recent Open events. James was the leader with Chris three strokes off the lead and Dru pulling up the rear, four strokes behind. A double par by Chris on hole 10 removed Chris from contention, with Dru pulling to within just two strokes on hole 16.

This would be James' day in more ways than one, as he was able to fend off any gains by Dru and reclaim The Brown Jacket by three strokes. There was speculation that after the round James yelled out, "I'm from Maryland, and nobody can beat me!"

New Fort Chode Open records were set with no mulligans on the day, and two golfers finishing with the same ball they started with.

While the course wasn't the best, it was in decent conditions due to January weather and frozen grounds to begin the day. As an added bonus, the cart paths were modeled from Baltimore roads, complete with spine breaking potholes. The clear highlight of the course was the GPS system built into the carts to show exact distances to pin, tee, and landmarks on the course.

Dru blamed his 3-stroke loss on forgetting his golf shoes. James' new golf pant provided the catalyst for the win.

Wedding Weekend

I spent most of the weekend up in Baltimore for Jim's James' wedding. It was a great time, the wedding and the surrounding festivities were all excellent. The event was held at the historic Harbor Court Hotel, and the only disappointing thing from the weekend was that I didn't hear anyone scream out "I am ready to fight" (other than Chris and myself). For pre-wedding entertainment we managed to get the seventh installment of the Fort Chode Open into the record books. Details to follow...

For some pictures, tune in to http://www.fortchode.com/gallery/v/GarrettWedding. Congratulations to James and Bri!

Fort Chode Open VI

ANNAPOLIS, MD - The historic Fort Chode Open held its sixth showdown on Saturday with a rare January date. Despite windy conditions, the weather was cooperative with temperatures in the low 50's and no rain at the Bay Hills Golf Club, a frequent site for the FCO. Dru showed up as the current owner of the Brown Jacket, but on this day the Jacket was up for grabs. This FCO was called in celebration of James' ending bachelorhood.


After a first-swing mulligan, James posted a par on the first hole and immediately declared his lead to be insurmountable. He also managed 100% fairway accuracy on the first two holes, which could only be combated with Dru's fairway and green on hole 2. Dru started chipping away at the lead until it was indeed surmounted. James ended the day with 9 fairways, a FCO record.


After a 2-stroke swing on hole 9, James took a one stroke lead into the back 9. He promptly posted a 10 on hole 10, and Dru was back in the lead. This time the lead would not be relinquished, and Dru would go on to keep the Brown Jacket, winning FCO VI by 2 strokes.

Chris battled a rough front 9, but came back on the back 9 to tie James for the back 9 score, ending up 15 off the lead. No houses were hit.

How will I spend my extra second?

It will be nice to have 25 hours in a day, but for now I'll be happy with my extra second.

Technorati, and discovered backlink

I came across Technorati today, an extremely interesting web site for blogs. The nature of this site is somewhat similar in theory to del.icio.us that I discussed previously. It indexes blogs, and creates tags for them based on content found in blogs and the links between them. One can then look up tags to find out what people are blogging about in just about real time. It does a great job of capturing the essence of the blogging medium, the type of content posted to them, and the type of people that contribute to them.

I looked up my blog profile and found that there was a link to my site other than friend's blogs. Looks like a post was made on symas.console() in reply to my post about Personal information and online tools. It got me wondering as to why there wasn't a trackback feature found on blogging software like Movable Type. Well, turns out that Blogger does have this, called "backlinks" and now I can see when other sites link back to a post here. They are now enabled.

So long story short, check out the post openldap('pim data') and my comments there.

Fantasy Sports Profile

Check out my Fantasy Sports Profile on Yahoo!

It's a nice feature they've added, which shows your history of fantasy sports played on their systems. My trophy case is due mostly to the three great March Madness pick sets I've had. You can also see all the leagues I ignored and got buried in.

Ultimate Foosball accessory

I was waiting for an andriod to play foosball against, but looks like we're one step closer with the Star Kick (reviewed at The Uber-Review):

It looks like the machine can completely dominate human opponents.

Thanks to Chris P for this link, I agree it screams out Longshot Kids.

And yes, this post is a direct attempt at avoiding the "Most Boring Blog Ever" award. What can inspire readers like a picture of Leif Garrett, foosball icon?

Wishes come true?

In this morning's post I made reference to IPTV, with hopes for it replacing my current cable service. Well lo and behold, this afternoon there is a post on HD Beat about Comcast jumping on the IPTV bandwagon.

I really shouldn't get my hopes up too much about this, since it will unlikely mean much difference right away, and TV will almost certainly be continued to be recieved through a set top box. I admit that I have done very little reading about the technology, but my two main hopes for IPTV would be finer selection of channels in order to (hopefully) reduce costs, and integration with PC and HTPC software. For channel selection, IPTV isn't required, as current digital tv technologies really allows it, so it's more on how the cable companies package it.

As for HTPC application, IPTV could definitely allow for true integration without the need for set top boxes. The problem is that these channels are still gauranteed to be nearly or completely proprietary and locked down, like premium HDTV over cable is today. Furthermore, digital cable could be delivered easily enough to PC's, since it's just MPEG2 (I think) data. CableCARD should be the solution, but the implementation and industry backing is horrible. From my understanding, even consumer electionics don't really work right with it, and there is no support for PC's. Microsoft's announcement about CableCARD support in MCE is a great step in the right direction, but most likely too little too late. So mabye IPTV will realize more of the potential of digital cable, maybe not. While I hope for great HTPC integration, it will likely be as much of a headache as digital cable is.

So the technology is definitely interesting in how it can change current TV, but will it really? A couple of comments:
- Will IPTV allow for more competition in the provider market, since distribution relies on the Internet? We've seen some great ideas for small startups in the HDTV space, but they have all failed. IPTV may be their real chance.
- While I don't consider the ability to play TV shows on the video iPod anything to get too excited about, the fact that TV shows are now being sold through services like iTunes is an interesting concept. The combination of IPTV and VOD could very easily promote a pay-per-view type model, where you pay for each show you watch. I doubt this will happen, since people are too used to the current TV broadcast model.

All this being said, who needs IPTV when you can use BitTorrent to quickly download shows right after they air?

At last!

HGTV will be in HD next year! Comcast, please pick up this station. Or maybe there will be viable IPTV by then, but I won't hold my breath.